AP Physics C/Electricity and Magnetism Electric Force

Coulomb's law, is sometimes called the Coulomb law, is an equation describing the electrostatic force between electric charges. It was studied and first published in the 1780s by French physicist Charles Augustin de Coulomb and was essential to the development of the theory of electromagnetism. Nevertheless, the dependence of the electric force with distance (inverse square law) had been proposed previously by Joseph Priestley[1] and the dependence with both distance and charge had been discovered, but not published, by Henry Cavendish, prior to Coulomb's works.The magnitude of the electrostatic force between two point electric charges is directly proportional to the product of the magnitudes of each of the charges and inversely proportional to the square of the total distance between the two charges.

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Electric Force

An atom is composed of a nucleus and a surrounding cloud of
electrons. Electrons are negatively charged. The nucleus has positively charged protons and neutral (uncharged)
neutrons. The SI unit of charge is the Coulomb (C). Charge of a proton = +e = 1.6 x 10^-19 C. Charge of an
electron = -e.

Like charges repel and unlike charges attract.

A conductor has many charge carriers that are free to move.
Insulators do not have mobile charges.

It is possible to charge an object by contact or by induction.

Electric Force

Lecture Slides are screen-captured images of important points in the lecture. Students can download and print out these lecture slide images to do practice problems as well as take notes while watching the lecture.